Age of Wonders 3 killed my GPU today.

[Mischief Maker]

Lovely game from a mechanics standpoint, but the engine is horribly optimized and prone to overheating.

I thought if I used EVGA precision and set the fan to aggressive it would counteract the overworking of my GPU. It seemed to be working but this afternoon I was running the game and suddenly my screen was full of lines and the computer crashed. I restarted, still lines everywhere, and Windows was giving my GPU a code 43. A hail-mary re-install of Nvidia drivers did nothing.

Of course this happened during a very busy week when I NEED my computer, so I went down to Best Buy and picked up their cheapest GPU. During the drive home I tried to indulge myself in the fantasy that the GeForce 610 GT I was buying to replace my dead GTX 570 might be a more powerful card, being a later model and all. No such luck, just about anything using 3D moves at a crawl. Doujin shmups seem to move along at a respectable pace, so there's that.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you think a program is running unusually hot on your machine, and some guy comes along and says, "Just dust out your case, software can't harm hardware," punch him in his dick!

[Ed Oscuro]

Obviously you know about this, but tools like http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ can give good information about how your rig is going. Unfortunately sample-to-sample variation in GPUs might mean that some cards don't do well at high temperatures while others will.

Just out of curiosity, what is airflow like in the case? (plz don't punch mah dick)

[Mischief Maker]

I'm rocking the Corsair Carbide performance cooling tower. If having a huge fan in the side of the case blowing directly onto the motherboard isn't enough airflow, I don't know what is.

[Ed Oscuro]

No, definitely not.

Went and read a stupid thread on Steam Forums with people arguing about safe temps for the 570, and it hit me - this is starting to get to be an older card. Could be a number of things that would let it go over the edge when stressed. Passives dying, fan dying, fan clogged (but I recently cleaned dust out of a 10 year old DVR's fan and that has been working just fine), maybe something else. With PCs components being expensive to replace, I'm constantly worried about motherboard and other components starting to act up, tripping the dominoes of other components. Your failure really does sound like a typical GPU failure though.

I'm not really impressed if nVidia's design failed to throttle the card based on temps. Also serves as another uninspirational point for modern PC gaming in my eyes.

[Jonathan Ingram]

Could be a driver bug. I played AoW3 on a laptop with an Nvidia GPU and it stayed pretty cool throughout. But look on the bright side - you don't need a modern system to run AoW2, HoMMIII and Master of Magic and they are (arguably) much better games to boot.

[ZellSF]

Games aren't "prone to overheating". A properly configured computer should be able to run everything at 100% without overheating.

I'm not really impressed if nVidia's design failed to throttle the card based on temps. Also serves as another uninspirational point for modern PC gaming in my eyes.

According to Nvidia, their cards throttle and eventually force a shutdown if that fails. No clue why that didn't work here, possibly faulty temperature sensor on the GPU? It happens. IMO every PC should go through a stability test before use.

[Mischief Maker]

Games aren't "prone to overheating". A properly configured computer should be able to run everything at 100% without overheating.

Did you just say "software can't harm hardware?"



And for the record I traded in that emergency crappy 610 for a reasonable GTX 960. As a test, I checked the heat levels of my new twin-fan maxwell architecture GPU without a speck of dust running a couple games. Temperatures were pleasingly low. Then I tried Age of Wonders 3. All I did was load round one of the campaign and temperatures spiked alarmingly high. Uninstall.

I repeat, Age of Wonders 3 is dangerous for your machine!

[Kaiser]

Maybe if you actually lowered the details knowing your computer was overheating you would avoid this debacle, it's one of PC Gaming's 101s. Some games will just use as much as they can unless you tell them to not to, just saying.

[Mischief Maker]

Maybe if you actually lowered the details knowing your computer was overheating you would avoid this debacle, it's one of PC Gaming's 101s. Some games will just use as much as they can unless you tell them to not to, just saying.

SIGH... Why must every single one of these threads turn into a contest to see who has the biggest fan? Does everyone think bad programming is like Tinkerbell, and if you don't believe in it, it disappears?

I was running the game at MINIMUM SETTINGS, save for textures, when the crash happened. It lowered the temperature by a whopping 5C.

If I'm just goofus, the only guy whose machine got hurt because I'm trying to run an overpowered game in a dustball tower, why is the internet filled with thread after thread after thread after thread after thread after thread after thread of people complaining about AoW 3 overheating?

We are currently not working on any additional fixes for the overheating problem, as our previous fixes have fixed most issues for most people.

Kind regards,
Yannick Segers

oh, and change the title of this thread. whoever added [FIXED] to this is either grossly mistaken, or trying to mislead people.

this issue is far from fixed.

[tacoguy64]

Oh wow even on your GTX960 the game is over heating your gpu? Have you tested other games to see if you get the same issue? It could be that Nvidia drivers are really poorly optimized with that game.

[Ed Oscuro]

Kaiser just didn't know you'd turned down the settings, since you didn't mention that (as far as I see). I also forgot the previous posts on this game, and you didn't mention it here, so it's no wonder people didn't know.

Class action lawsuit time, oh yeah

I am confused by ZellSF saying "games aren't prone to overheating" and then ending with "all games need a stability test." Hunh

Also, don't be like that tool Batum, no groin punches please

I can't understand how this is happening, really. All the further suggestions I've seen boil down to adequate PSU (not the problem obviously), frame limit cap, and disabling SSAO.

[ZellSF]

I am confused by ZellSF saying "games aren't prone to overheating" and then ending with "all games need a stability test." Hunh

I said all computers need a stability test, not the games. If you're confused, try some reading comprehension before putting words into my mouth.

If I'm just goofus, the only guy whose machine got hurt because I'm trying to run an overpowered game in a dustball tower, why is the internet filled with thread after thread after thread after thread after thread after thread after thread of people complaining about AoW 3 overheating?

I'm not sure if you are ready to hear this, but... people are stupid.

That's why tons of people are holding video game developers responsible for hardware issues. It's not new and certainly not exclusive to Age of Wonders 3. It's not even exclusive to PC gaming.

Then I tried Age of Wonders 3. All I did was load round one of the campaign and temperatures spiked alarmingly high. Uninstall.

Three possibilities:

1: Your case cooling is really terrible.
2: You're for some reason on really outdated Nvidia drivers (there was a old driver version that turned off fans on the card).
3: Your definition of alarmingly high is uneducated (GPUs can handle up to 100C, if you're not above 85C there's no cause for alarm).

Figure it out or wait for another game to kill your GPU (and no, you can't tell which games are GPU intensive as easily as you think).

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm sorry, but that post is just terrible. Also possibly sadistic when your most helpful note is "figure it out or wait for another game to kill your GPU." With help like that, who needs to troll?

Yes, I did read in "games need..." where you said computers. I apologize for the appearance of reading in something you didn't state - but this doesn't actually matter for the subject matter; I'm still mystified about why you would believe it does. Most people hand-waving away overheating problems (including the AoW3 ones) use the gambit of saying "there is no overheating, it's all IN YOUR MIND!" That's what you say at one point ("90 degrees is fine"). When there is proven overheating or damage, people usually shift to ImNutz4NvSLI mode, telling victims of the bad nVidia drivers "this is war, survival is your responsibility." Thermal throttling? Don't count on it, apparently!

Is there overheating damage or isn't there? The answer isn't what everybody seems to think. And even knowing the right answer, fixing the problem isn't possible for 99% of users who can't change fan temps, let alone throttling treshholds, even if they knew what to do. It is absurd to blame users for this when nobody exposes simple functionality to just cap a system's thermals, or (in the case of the hapless AoW3 dev) giving functionality to actually meaningfully reduce the game demands.

Either you are trying to be comprehensive (but not succeeding), or mistakenly posting possible answers / fixes that mostly don't apply here or to the other cases of AoW3 overheating.

1) You shouldn't believe inadequate ventilation is the problem. That is obviously not a factor, here and in many other threads on AoW3. Again, what the hell is throttling doing if it's not working?
2) You shouldn't be mentioning an obscure case of fan driver problems dating from early March of the year the GTX 570 was first reviewed - in December. It's safe to say no GTX 570 even shipped with those drivers. They were recalled after 3 days, nVidia even emailed people about it. Maybe there is somebody out there using ForceWare 196.75 with a GTX 570, not noticing their fan won't spin up, but not everybody.
3) You shouldn't be hand-waving away the appearance of a damaged GPU with snorts of "uneducated" and "GPUs can handle up to 100C," which itself is not a helpful or accurate answer in any way, and contradicts your apparent acceptance of a heat-damaged GPU. MM isn't complaining about other people's high temps, he's talking about an apparently damaged GPU!

Of course there is some uncertain possible causality here, and most of the GPU temp reports about AoW3 don't deal with broken cards, but still it is out of line with much other software, especially in that its settings don't seem to help the temperatures appreciably. It is especially strange that they don't expose functionality in the driver, which is apparently where the high temps are the problem, that actually lets you deal with the problem. "Figure it out" when there's no obvious developer-exposed function to do that? That's reckless.

So, back to the stress test. That would have been a terrible idea because MM's card is 5 years old and long out of warranty. 100 degrees C might be fine for a card - but not for that long. It doesn't matter that the card was probably not running those temps consistently; it's still going to reduce lifespan, and it could just be that MM got unlucky - temp ratings don't take into account defects in the silicon lotto. The answer to "how hot is too hot?" is simple - keep temps as low as possible if you want your card to live a long time. It's not just the silicon on the card, but the passives as well (especially if your card rocks wet electrolytic caps, which could still be true for 2010, not sure, and even if not, holy hell 200 degrees F is hot), potentially. If we're going to go way back in time to look for precedents, we could point out that probably all nVidia G84 chips had a problem with their BGA pads lifting and splitting (or similar), and that bad behavior was completely exposed by heat cycles. This isn't likely as drastic, but it could just be that the card is at the end of its lifespan and this pushed it over the edge, same as FurMark or any other demanding game.

Quite likely this has little to do with bad system builds and everything to do with the horrible practices of hardware manufacturers catering to rich gamers and productivity users without caring about lifespan beyond the typical 2 year period of a GTX 570, but I won't rant about that there. Still, this is an alarming combination for other users on different hardware also, and they are using different hardware and getting similar results.

Anybody who is happily running temps around 90 degrees C regularly will no doubt get a call from beyond ImNutz4NvSLI's grave if they lose the silicon lottery and have their part die before they replace it.

I'd offer more candidates for explaining what happened, all more likely than the list above.

- The event is basically totally random and not influenced by heat at all. The appearance of causality is a coincidence.
- Old card, just happened to be at the end of its lifespan, and possibly AoW3 kicked it over the edge. (My favored answer.) Still note that this doesn't exonerate anybody.
- Possibly the video problems mentioned were actually due to some strange corruption of the video driver, which would be fixed on a careful reinstall, possibly of the whole OS. Not keeping hopeful on that one, but might be worth a shot.

[ZellSF]

You seem to imply I'm handwaving overheating away when I'm not. I'm just saying there's two factors to preventing overheating:

1: The user must provide a sane environment.
2: The hardware/driver must automatically control itself by adjusting fan speeds, downclocking and eventually shutting down as necessary when subjected to excessive heat/load (even if it's due to failure of 1).

At no point should a piece of third party software be held responsible for overheating to the point of hardware damage, that's letting Nvidia getting away with selling you faulty hardware.

1) You shouldn't believe inadequate ventilation is the problem. That is obviously not a factor

We have been given no description of Mischief Makers's ventilation. You can't rule something out without knowing anything about it. If he didn't have adequate ventilation, then he could have prevented this. Shouldn't have had to, but could have.

2) You shouldn't be mentioning an obscure case of fan driver problems dating from early March of the year the GTX 570 was first reviewed - in December.

I don't research everything I write, so I got the dates a bit wrong. Not like it would be harmful if he took my advice and upgraded the drivers (even if the basis for the advice was wrong).

3) You shouldn't be hand-waving away the appearance of a damaged GPU with snorts of "uneducated" and "GPUs can handle up to 100C," which itself is not a helpful or accurate answer in any way

It is helpful and accurate. If he's checking temperatures, he should know which ones are acceptable and which ones are not. For all you know, he could be panicking because his GTX 960 is reaching 65C under heavy load. He wouldn't be the first to get this wrong.

So, back to the stress test. That would have been a terrible idea because MM's card is 5 years old and long out of warranty.

You're really intent on misreading me, I said a stability test before use. I thought "first use" was implied, I'm not telling people to do a stability test every time they boot their computer. I'm telling people to check if their hardware functions properly when they get it.

Even if you did misread me, it wouldn't have been a bad idea anyway, stability tests generally show the temperature. So unless the sensor was faulty, running a stability test could have prompted him to go "I should look at this before playing games" or at the very least "I should monitor my temperatures while playing games until I can get this fixed". A game however does not show the temperature and by the time you realize something is wrong it's too late.

[Mischief Maker]

Kaiser, I apologize for getting on my hind legs earlier, but the way this thread is proceeding is a perfect example of what was going on the weeks leading up to my GPU burnout. Me going to the Triumph and GOG forums and expressing misgivings about AoW3's heat levels and being answered by derisive snorts and computer gaming 101 advice that usually ignored salient details of my original post. Because I enjoyed the game so much, I foolishly let myself be swayed by their terrible advice and now I'm $200 poorer. Thanks for your advice, but I've built several towers myself and don't need 101 level advice.

ZellSF, Jesus! Before you put on your professor genius hat, maybe try reading my posts in the thread? They already address most of your dismissals:

• My computer is in a corsair carbide case, which is mostly metal mesh and features an 8 inch fan on the side blowing air directly onto the GPU, and the tower sits on my desk. Thanks to the case's easy open access, I flush dust out of the innards with compressed air frequently.
  
  Not only was I running the latest Nvidia drivers at the time of the crash, I also had EVGA precision installed so I could change the fan profile from default to "aggressive" to counter the heat problem in AoW3.
  
  On both the 570 and my new 960, I played other games, AAA titles running much more demanding graphics like Witcher 2, and they did not show the sudden violent temperature spikes nor the high maximum temperatures of AoW3.
  
  Yes yes, lots of people are stupid, and a lot of stupid people give dismissive computer advice. Read the threads I linked and you will see the people complaining about the overheating giving similar details to preempt the inevitable 101 advice, only to have those details ignored and the whole thread degenerate into a bragging fest about cooling systems

It's also worth noting that the King's Bounty games used to have similar overheating problems, but they eventually isolated and fixed it and now they run at normal temperatures.

[Kaiser]

I want to apologize as well because I should have asked politely what details you used Mischief_Maker, KEEP IN MIND I had it happen before but not enough to damage the card, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon and Alan Wake made my Radeon 7850 overheat for some bizarre reason to the point of shutdown but the card's fine, i'm simply refusing to play both of those because of what happened

Also FUCK AOW3 DEVS FOR IGNORING THE ISSUE.

[ZellSF]

Apologies for not reading some of your posts thoroughly, but my point still stands: the blame should lie with Nvidia, not Age of Wonders 3.

Put simply: do you want the responsibility for not killing your hardware to be on one accountable company or countless developers, each game you play a new risk?

That's why PC gamers are ganging up on you, because you're placing the blame in an insane place. No PC gamer wants to have to check the reputation of every game developer before starting a game. They want a graphic card the manufacturer stands by that will work with everything.

A saner complaint to level against Age of Wonders III would be: why is performance so terrible? It doesn't place Nvidia's responsibility on the developers, but it does ask them to address their optimization.

Ask them about "why is your game killing my hardware" and the developers very understandably want absolutely no part in it.

[Ed Oscuro]

Faith in humanity somewhat restored today, since I was dreading coming back to see a nonsensical tirade

I don't have a problem with a stress test in appropriate circumstances, but once again, it's not relevant to this thread.

In 2010 MM could have run FurMark and gotten his system up to 100 degrees C, I'm sure, and probably had no problem. The issue is that result tells us nothing about how the hardware will respond to a power draw / heat spike five years later.

I'm still not keen on stress tests because of the potential for doing a small amount of real damage to the system, less than what triggers any kind of obvious malfunction. Again this is the same issue: Reliability of computer components doesn't stay stable over time, but it inevitably degrades.

That's why PC gamers are ganging up on you, because you're placing the blame in an insane place.

Not entirely true. Almost every other PC game developer creates software that exposes functionality for reining in their programs' computational use. Every other developer realizes that even when GPUs can run at 90 degrees for a reduced lifespan they should not believe this is a reasonable requirement.

All that is happening is that AoW 3 is being compared to many other well-known demanding games, and looking poor as a result. Or do you think it is "insane" that people say that a game is poor if it doesn't hit the same FPS marks as other games? It happens all the time, and all we are doing is looking at performance along another (but related) axis.

I find it hard to believe that there is no way they can make the program more efficient or scale performance requirements, but it could possibly be true (a 4X game with presumably a lot of calculations being done right on the GPU). I find it hard to believe this is true in part because the excessive GPU loading seems to happen regardless of GPU choice. Even if the game is actually quite efficient, it seems to require hardware that doesn't exist yet in order to run at more comfortable temperatures.

If they were running on a locked-down mobile platform, you could bet that this amount of GPU heating wouldn't be allowed to stand. Unfortunately they can just use the "every system is different" dodge to try and ignore the fact that the game's baseline GPU loading seems far in excess of most other games, and can't be fixed.

[ZellSF]

My point was, you can raise demands for the game's performance relative to the load on the graphic card. That's perfectly reasonable, it's entirely within the control of the developers (as it should be).

Where I have a problem is when you raise demands for temperature standards, because that shouldn't be left to game developers. It should be entirely regulated by driver/hardware and I haven't heard a single good reason to leave that to game developers.

So again, the question I feel I'm not getting any answer to: why so eager to blame temperature issues on the game developer?

Not entirely true. Almost every other PC game developer creates software that exposes functionality for reining in their programs' computational use.

Yes, but those options are never there for temperature control, they are there for performance control. You'll notice that most game developers write it that way too, you'll find almost no games where options have references to effect on temperature and tons where there are references to effect on performance.

[Ed Oscuro]

My point was, you can raise demands for the game's performance relative to the load on the graphic card. That's perfectly reasonable, it's entirely within the control of the developers (as it should be).

No, just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. I disagree that you can just assume that you can "raise demands" and run close to redline all the time. At the very least they should have working functionality to tone that down. AoW3 developer statements make it abundantly clear they know this is happening and they recognize that it's unintended and undesirable. Coupled with these apparently inflexible demands, they don't specifically say that you need an Uber-card to run the game; their minimum requirement is a GeForce 8800 and their recommended (GTX 460) is still older than MM's former card.

The point is that the thermal throttling is kicking in far beyond what is acceptable for many people, which the dev knows and has decided to ignore.

[ZellSF]

No, just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. I disagree that you can just assume that you can "raise demands" and run close to redline all the time. At the very least they should have working functionality to tone that down. AoW3 developer statements make it abundantly clear they know this is happening and they recognize that it's unintended and undesirable. Coupled with these apparently inflexible demands, they don't specifically say that you need an Uber-card to run the game; their minimum requirement is a GeForce 8800 and their recommended (GTX 460) is still older than MM's former card.

The point is that the thermal throttling is kicking in far beyond what is acceptable for many people, which the dev knows and has decided to ignore.

That... was not a reply to what you quoted. Nor does it really dispute any point I made.

Just answer the question plainly already: Do you want to have to check every single game for thermal issues before playing it?

[Ed Oscuro]

It was a direct response to what you wrote. Read it again.

Do you want to have to check every single game for thermal issues before playing it?

With asshole devs like the AoW3 team, it looks like you have no choice.

In any case, "want" and "need" are totally different things. I might want to run AoW3 on a LN cooled PC with hardware refreshed bimonthly, but I might have to run it on a nearly five-year-old card (which, again, they explicitly support, and even older cards besides). No hardware is completely stable in response to heat over the course of years in use. A stability test 5 years ago might have flunked the card, or the results then might have had nothing to do with what would happen nearly 5 years later. And even if MM could say "I FurMark'd this bitch four years ago and it was fine," you KNOW what the answer would be: "There is no problem with AoW3 and/or the temps, your case is full of dust, the GPU just died on its own, etc., etc."

In my view, his system is already stability tested for normal programs. You don't just arbitrarily load up a system with crazy high temps "just in case," unless you feel the need to run a system at those temps, and in any case, the idea really isn't to load high temps, but try to aim for stability under load, not temperatures. Doing otherwise strikes me as destructive and wasteful.

If we could set hard thermal limits then this wouldn't be necessary at all - of course a hard thermal limit could bring proceedings to a screeching halt as the GPU operation would literally have to halt until heat dissipated (as seen here).

Please don't trot out "that wasn't an answer to the question" again; you keep trying to drag this off-topic from the question of whether it's reasonable to say that AoW3 is doing fine by not giving users any means of reducing the game's load on PCs.

[ZellSF]

It was a direct response to what you wrote. Read it again.

I did, like 10 times. It still does not make any sense as a reply to what I wrote.

With asshole devs like the AoW3 team, it looks like you have no choice.

You have a choice. Blame high GPU temperatures on Nvidia and they'll keep it their responsibility (like I and most people think it should be).

The choice you're making by blaming Age of Wonders III is encouraging the situation I asked if you wanted.

In any case, "want" and "need" are totally different things. I might want to run AoW3 on a LN cooled PC with hardware refreshed bimonthly, but I might have to run it on a nearly five-year-old card (which, again, they explicitly support, and even older cards besides). No hardware is completely stable in response to heat over the course of years in use. A stability test 5 years ago might have flunked the card, or the results then might have had nothing to do with what would happen nearly 5 years later. And even if MM could say "I FurMark'd this bitch four years ago and it was fine," you KNOW what the answer would be: "There is no problem with AoW3 and/or the temps, your case is full of dust, the GPU just died on its own, etc., etc."

5 year old PC doesn't matter, the hardware/driver should still handle high temperatures. An old PC should come at a loss of performance only (due to naturally aging things like thermal paste and fans getting worse).

More importantly, a graphic card degrading severely after 5 years isn't something we should accept. Again, Nvidia should answer for that (I don't believe it is a general problem though).

Please don't trot out "that wasn't an answer to the question" again; you keep trying to drag this off-topic from the question of whether it's reasonable to say that AoW3 is doing fine by not giving users any means of reducing the game's load on PCs.

No other developer does this, why do you feel Age of Wonders III developers should?

They provide options for balancing load/visual quality vs performance like almost all game developers.
They provide no options for controlling temperature or reducing load "just because", like almost all game developers.

I don't think you'll find many (if any) game developers saying temperatures are their problem. I don't think you'll find an AMD or Nvidia employee who says it should be either.

[Mischief Maker]

Lemme just put the debate to rest, because I'm 99% sure why my 570 failed. When I tested AoW3 on my 960, I used GPU Temp, which graphs temperature over time. Not only did AoW3 get hotter than Witcher 2, the GPU's temperature spike was sudden and rapid. The 570 failed right as I was booting up AoW3, it's likely that the violent temperature spike was what did it in.

[Ed Oscuro]

On the off chance it might help explain things, is there anything visibly damaged on the GPU? It's out of the way, but I'd be interested to know if there is anything obviously wrong with the thermal paste / pad between the GPU die and its cooler.

Again, "it should be safe" is obviously only in reference to the standard case (and those tests may well only be pertinent to new GPUs anyway, not an old GPU on an old board). Even though it should have been within safe limits for the GPU, it's still reasonable to wonder where that heat caused physical change in the board or components. What I'd say is certainly unknown is if this was a gradual or sudden failure. Either way, there's no reason to suspect that using the card at lower temperatures (as normal) would have brought on such a failure.

ZellSF: Nobody's said that developers should eliminate the possibility to run at the full given capacity of the card. Nobody's said that nVidia doesn't share any blame (in fact I said they do, and gave an example of heat-related nVidia GPU failures), but I am also saying that this developer's GUI settings obviously aren't doing enough to scale performance requirements for people who want to scale them down. This is not an unusual feature demand.

[ZellSF]

It's a very unusual demand.

Most games have tons of graphic options for balancing a variety of factors, but there's never any options that are there just to scale down performance with no benefit.

Nobody's said that nVidia doesn't share any blame

Share? If a GPU dies from hardware failure they don't share the blame, it's entirely theirs.

[Mischief Maker]

I just posted a very carefully worded complaint to AoW3's forums that hopefully pre-empts all the usual deflections in these kinds of threads.

Let's see if this results in positive action, or devolves into another hardware dick-measuring contest:

http://ageofwonders.com/forums/topic/yo ... ed-my-gpu/

[Ed Oscuro]

Cool, let's see if they take it seriously this time. Probably not, in which case I wonder whether pressure @ nVidia might help get change in the other direction.

Some kind of consumer-facing feature to hard limit CPU temps, not just fan options, might be interesting here. I doubt it would do anything other than crash this game, but at least it would be more likely to spare cards in the case of somebody not realizing the temp increase was happening.

@ ZellSF, hopefully for the last time: First you tried to shift blame to MM, now you're trying to shift blame to nVidia. I feel fairly sure you aren't going to do anything for reforming nVidia card temps, but you're welcome to work that angle if you can. In the meantime it'd be nice if you stopped the unwarranted criticism of MM's attempts to get a resolution on the developer side. In any case, I am quite surprised to learn that a working Settings page is a "very unusual demand." What's apparently unusual is AoW 3's engine loading on at least certain GPUs, which obviously makes such a a setting useful for at least some players of this game, since you seem to now agree that the card was harmed by high temps.

[ZellSF]

@ ZellSF, hopefully for the last time: First you tried to shift blame to MM, now you're trying to shift blame to nVidia.

That's because either of those two has the blame. Obviously, if you try to run a game while your computer is in an oven, you are to blame. If you try to run a game while your computer is well ventilated and the graphic card fails, the graphic card manufacturer is to blame.

it'd be nice if you stopped the unwarranted criticism of MM's attempts to get a resolution on the developer side

It's not unwarranted, he's asking the developer to take responsibility for something they have nothing to do with and want nothing to do with (hardware stability). He's going to get stonewalled, and that's that.

He should take it up with the people who actually has the responsibility if he wants an answer.

In any case, I am quite surprised to learn that a working Settings page is a "very unusual demand".

Having a working settings page and having settings that are there just to provide a worse experience with no benefit is not the same thing. Most games have a working settings page. Few games have options just to reduce performance with no benefit.

Find me a list of games with options that say they're specifically for controlling temperature. Until you do, it's still a very unusual demand.

The weird thing is, you can demand a lot of settings that might do what you want WITHOUT placing the responsibility on the game developer for hardware stability. You can say you want framelimiting for lower input latency for example. Game developers are all over that, they want you to have the best experience possible with their game. Try saying you want framelimiting to control temperatures? Game developers want nothing to do with that.

Again, to be as clear as possible: game developers don't want any responsibility for hardware stability. It's generally accepted that they shouldn't have. You have yet to give any single good reason why you think this should change. Yet, by placing blame of Age of Wonders III that's what you're advocating. So again, WHY?

[Mischief Maker]

I knew this whole situation reminded me of something.